"... faith, Sir, we are here to Day, and
gone to Morrow."
-- Aphra Behn, The Lucky Chance

The Aphra Behn
Page

"All women together ought to let flowers fall upon
the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather
appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned
them the right to speak their minds. It is she--shady and amorous
as she was--who makes it not quite fantastic for me to
say to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by your wits."
-- Virginia
Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Aphra Behn, the first professional woman
writer in English, lived from 1640 to 1689. After John Dryden, she was the most prolific dramatist of the
Restoration, but it is for her pioneering work in prose
narrative that she achieved her place in literary history.